My baby is so vain she is almost a mirror...

I never really understood what that line meant. Anyway, a few weeks ago Patrik over at Cobain in a Coma put up a bunch of videos (mostly dark, post-punky glamy stuff, but also Fever Ray and Gwar) and among them was this gem from the Boys Next Door. For those of you who might not be familiar with the Boys (or able to deduce from the video) they were basically the Birthday Party without Tracy Pew (aka the best part of the Party). I love the Boys almost as much as I love the Birthday Party, but a lot of people talk shit about them. Yeah, if you take away the screeching guitars and soul-rattling bass of the BP and add some sax and keyboards the product comes off a little maudlin and mopey, but those critics forget that Nick and the rest of the boys were like 7 yrs old at the time. Plus their album Door, Door has a song about Roman Polanski on it!

One time me and Mitsu were talking about the BP and I got in trouble for saying that [bassist] Tracy Pew was the balls of the BP. Mitsu argued that [guitarist] Rowland Howard was the balls.
For the record:

This is Tracy Pew-



This is Rowland S Howard-


This is just a phenotypic comparison, but it goes deeper. One of the biggest draws of the BP is their menacingly loud sound. No, I'm not trying to sell Rowland short, he's a big part of the BP sound, his wailing, distorted and manaical guitars are almost wholly responsible for the assulting racket that makes the BP so appealing (along with Nicks screaming, duh). Tracy is solely resposnible for the presence of the band. Listening to the BP in preperation for this post I tried to find a song representative of Tracy's awesomeness but for the most part couldn't get past the screaming and the guitar feedback, until I realized that in every song the gutteral bass is the ground that the rest of the band plays on. That bad vibration is the lurking monster. Rowland stabs you in the face, Tracy swallows you whole.
I remember breaking down the physiology of the Birthday Party like this: Nick Cave is the raw, throat, the bloody mouth. Rowland is the sharpned fingernails or the teeth. Phil Calvet/ Mick Harvey [drummers] are the boots on the feet and Tracy is the balls/ guts of the beast.

This is from a Birthday Party DVD called Pleasure Heads Must Burn, it's my 3rd favourite BP song.

Malajube

New video for Canadian band, and Nic Harcourt faves Malajube. I think Malajube is a kind of disease, but I'm not sure. The song is pretty neat and also pretty pretty, and the video has a girl almost drowning.

Labyrinthes is out via Dare To Care as are their other records.

Too Soon?

So I was in Silverlake, at Sunset Junction this past Friday/ Saturday and happned across these amazing tags on the street. This one is from Saturday right outside the Intelligensia Cafe. The best thing is that when I was on Sunset and Vermont the day before I found this gem on the side of one of those LA Express dispensers.

What is the deal? I love the absurdity of this person deciding to wait eight years after 9/11 to bust this out. More reason's why LA is the best city in the world: terrorists know not to fuck with us.

Currently listening to: Youth Tunes by Little Girls (Not to be confused with The Little Girls, the gross 80's sluts from Santa Monica. These Little Girls are from Toronto and are good.)